


Thorns

by magikfanfic



Category: Runaways (Comics), Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 12:16:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13458072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: 11. hey, i’m liking your photos at 2am because i want to make out.  i’m texting you at noon because i want to make out.  i woke up today because i (we don’t need words)There’s this game they play that neither of them really acknowledges, which is mostly because Chase doesn’t know how to bring it up, and he’s pretty sure that Gert would die before admitting that it’s a thing because then there might be questions about feelings, which has been Gert’s biggest weakness since they were about six. “How do you feel today?” their teacher would ask the class, and everyone would answer in a chorus of high pitched voices and most of them said great or fine or I like candy. But Gert would sit there, the only pensive child in the class, and look like she was trying to figure out the entire sordid history of the human race rather than how she felt. So Chase gets why she doesn’t say anything whenever they’re around each other, which isn’t all that much considering.





	Thorns

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a small drabble for an A Softer World prompt, but it spun out of control. 
> 
> This is mostly TV canon but is a the parents aren't murderers/no powers AU. Probably.

11\. hey, i’m liking your photos at 2am because i want to make out. i’m texting you at noon because i want to make out. i woke up today because i (we don’t need words)

There’s this game they play that neither of them really acknowledges, which is mostly because Chase doesn’t know how to bring it up, and he’s pretty sure that Gert would die before admitting that it’s a thing because then there might be questions about feelings, which has been Gert’s biggest weakness since they were about six. “How do you feel today?” their teacher would ask the class, and everyone would answer in a chorus of high pitched voices and most of them said great or fine or I like candy. But Gert would sit there, the only pensive child in the class, and look like she was trying to figure out the entire sordid history of the human race rather than how she felt. So Chase gets why she doesn’t say anything whenever they’re around each other, which isn’t all that much considering. Considering that his friends are not her friends. He’s not even sure that she has friends so much as people who join her on her causes, and those aren’t always even the same people because Gert has, oh, too many causes for him to count. No, his friends, the lacrosse players, their girlfriends, the cheerleaders, all the popular, shiny, happy people, make fun of people like Gert. Okay. They don’t just make fun of people like Gert; they make fun of Gert. Specifically. In the way that makes him want to shake them and let them know exactly how they will never be worthy to even talk to her. But he can’t because. Because it’s the only thing he has right now. His shitty friends. Who are either as bad as his shitty father or as subservient as his mother who is not exactly shitty but not exactly great either.

He doesn’t have a lot going for him, and high school is almost over. All he needs to do is get through it, this last year. Just get through it and then leave. Once he leaves he can be anyone he wants to be. He can be around anyone he wants to be. He can stop with this farce, though he’s not sure that he’s strong enough to do that. More than likely he will probably let it carry him. Lacrosse can net him a decent scholarship since it doesn’t seem like his dad is willing to pay for anything other than maybe MIT, and Chase wants to get out from under his thumb (and his fists and his feet and his elbows and every other part of him that should not hurt so goddamn much but does) as quickly as possible and letting him foot the bill for college isn’t exactly that.

It’s safe to say that his homelife is a bust, and school isn’t much better, and his friends are people he hangs out with when he is forced to be social but they are not the people he calls when things are bad. (Surprise! He calls no one when things are bad, though he wants to call Gert, sometimes almost gets drunk enough to do it, and then remembers the way her face screws up occasionally when they pass each other in the hall and loses the nerve.) The game is one of the few nice things that he has, it’s something he can look forward to even if he also lives in constant fear that it will just stop or someone will find out about it and call him on it. Chase isn’t sure he could exactly put it into words or explain why and how it came to be.

One day, he and Gert had not spoken to each other in two years, and the next. The next they were direct messaging on Instagram. He doesn’t remember who started the conversation, though he knows that it would be easy enough to find it. It doesn’t really matter who started it, it started. And it hasn’t stopped. And it’s been three months now. Three months of messages and photo likes back and forth that make his heart race almost more than the messages themselves, which is weird, right? It’s weird. It’s strange that he’s back crushing on the girl he’s been fawning over, off and on, since he was about ten. Or maybe younger. Chase has always admired Gert. Chase has always wanted to be near her. Of their group, she was always his favorite, and they were always the closest. Well, except for Molly. Gert is closest to Molly because they’re sisters. But Chase, he was always closest to Gert. Until they all stopped being close to each other.

Despite how strange it is to be talking to her again out of the blue with no real reason for it, it’s nice. It’s like waking up and remembering that his father is out of town for the next week so he doesn’t need to tiptoe around his own house. It’s a breath of fresh air. It’s freeing.

He’s missed her. Like someone tore a hole in his chest that he’s been trying to patch with flimsy pieces of paper that keep getting ripped away when the wind blows. Their group fell apart and everyone who seemed real in his life just vanished. He’s been left with people made of straw. He thinks that’s from a poem Gert told him about when they were younger, straw men, but he isn’t really sure, and he can’t work up the gumption to ask her. He’s half afraid to let her know that he’s been listening to her and storing information this whole time. That things she said when they were children have been used for the bricks he made to surround his heart because it’s a terribly fragile thing that no one respects much, and it needed some protection. Sometimes even from her, though he isn’t sure she’s aware of that either.

They talk. About nothing. About so much. It’s like it used to be only there’s still this sense of removal because in the light of day, under the always judging eyes of everyone else, they don’t interact. She doesn’t even say hi. She barely even seems to look his way, and Chase should know because he’s been having an increasingly difficult time keeping his eyes off her since they started talking again. Anyone paying attention would probably call him on it, but here’s the thing they don’t tell you about being the handsome, popular jock: people are looking at you all the time but none of them actually notice anything about you so you can do whatever you want as long as you’re pretty.

Once he figured that out, he was golden because it meant it was easier to hide in front of a giant group of people all seemingly clamoring for his attention. Crowds are safer. You don’t stick out. People can’t target you. He can just be one person in the whole mix of people.

Not like Gert. Who he can spot from the other side of the school even though she’s small because it always seems like there’s a light on her. It’s her hair. It’s her clothes. It’s the way she presents herself and doesn’t back down even when her hands shake, even when she’s nervous. Chase hid in a sea of faces all bland, all wanting to be the same, and Gert, even with her anxiety, carved herself out a rock to stand on, alone, and then started shouting at the rest of the world for them to hear her. He doesn’t know how anyone could look at her courage and find something there to belittle. He doesn’t get it even though his friends do it in front of him every single day.

But if he says something then his camouflage is shot, then they will see him, right through the veneer, right to the beating, wet, fearful core of him, and Chase is not good at standing in the eye of the storm by himself. And it’s not like he can ask Gert to hold his hand. (Though he wants to. So much. Remembers when they were young, and she used to. Chase was almost always the first to cry in stressful situations, and Gert was inevitably there to hold his hand or hug him or just be by his side.)

So he says nothing in public, but he apologizes when he messages her. He apologizes and he tries to explain in long, rambling details that he worries are boring or mundane or some other word that Gert knew before the rest of them properly understood the concept of a bicycle. And Gert will tell him not to worry about it, that it’s fine, and his herd mentality doesn’t surprise her. If she’s in a particularly mean mood, she will sometimes say that his herd mentality disappoints her, and he hates that but she’s allowed because it’s true. Chase wasn’t always like this; he used to be better. Back when she was his best friend. Back when things were simple.

He wishes things were still that simple. He misses her. Even with the game, which is far and away the best thing he could have asked for, he misses her because while this is nice, it’s not her. She is not physically there. He cannot touch her. He cannot reach her. And there are all these things left unsaid even in their messages, which are numerous and long and rambling because both of them tend to talk. When they were young, it used to be a kind of competition, which one of them could spout off the most, which one of them knew more. They would sit and talk, back and forth, for hours, for so long that sometimes the rest of the group would just drift away to do something else because who would want to listen to that?

Gert would talk about everything. Books she had read, experiments her parents were doing, weird internet conspiracy theories about mothman, and recite poetry at him. And Chase would talk about things he wanted to do, places he wanted to see, people he wanted to bring with him on those adventures--which was always her, he always listed her first--and just. Gert would bring him the world to talk about, and Chase would make up a completely new one to tell her about because even then, even when they were young, he was hiding as much as he could, as much as he needed to. Like wearing long sleeves in summer to ensure that no one saw the marks. The others never mentioned it, but Gert’s eyes would linger like she suspected something.

How many times has he considered telling her the truth only to chicken out on every single occasion because he didn’t know what her reaction would be? Too many. Too many to count, and Chase is good with numbers. He’s too good with numbers. It reminds him of his father, and he. Doesn’t want that. In so many ways. In so many things.

It’s late or early. It’s those rare hours of not yet morning no longer night when everything in his house has gone still enough that he can pretend he is alone and safe. Chase is outside by his father’s telescope, having crawled out there quiet quiet practically on his hands and knees because it’s the safest, avoiding anything in the house that he knows will make a noise. It’s not really safe enough, but he can’t get any further away right now without leaving the premises, and his father is already in a paper-thin mood. Chase doesn’t want to push it, not when there’s already a line of bruises purpling down his left arm for saying the wrong thing at dinner.

The glass had crashed into the wall. His mother had made that sound like a trapped animal. Chase had stood. Victor had stood. Victor, like always, had won because Chase still cannot fight back. Not with anything other than words and those only wind his father up more.

The air in the house is stifling, too close, predatory, always waiting for him to make a wrong move, to screw-up. It’s better outside. It’s best by the telescope where if he squints a little he can almost see Gert crouched, gazing up at the stars, making notes and occasionally clicking her tongue at him. One day he would like to steal the telescope and give it to her. Chase would like to give her a lot of things, but the physical ones are easier to package, not as hard to hold as a feeling, like the feathery brush of wings inside his chest whenever his notification sound dings. How does he package that up? In a box? With a bow? If he catches it, will it just fade?

He doesn't know. He doesn't try. He just runs his fingers along the metal of the telescope, pretends that it hasn’t been so long since she touched it, pretends that his fingers ghost across hers, wishes he had been more attentive during that assignment, but she was right there, and he was being everything he was supposed to. And looking at her, fawning over her, when just being near her would have ruined his camouflage, was too hard.

He checks her Insta feed the way another man, lost on the ocean, might search the sky for the north star, and is rewarded. There’s a picture posted three minutes ago. It’s one side of Gert’s face, which is pulled into an exaggerated frown, with her drum kit in the background. The caption reads, “The man has decreed it’s too late for this, which is bullshit because punk never sleeps. But punk doesn’t want to be grounded so we’re on pause.”

He likes it immediately.

The message comes through barely forty seconds later. “You’re up late, Stein.”

It’s a Friday. There is no school tomorrow, no lacrosse practice. Chase has not made any plans to fill the weekend because he thought his father would be out of town but the trip was canceled last minute, turning the house into a danger zone and making his father’s always stormy moods that much darker. Maybe that is why he sends the message that he does. “Punk never sleeps. What are you doing now that you’ve been banished from your musical kingdom?”

“I’m supposed to be: get some sleep, kiddo, a schedule is better for your anxiety.”

That sounds like Dale, though Chase knows it could be either of the Yorkes. He likes the Yorkes. A lot. Yeah, they’re weird and can thoroughly embarrass both of the girls in ten seconds flat. They dress like they just unironically walked out of a thrift shop that caters to elderly women, and some of the food that they make is completely and utterly inedible, but they’re sweet and they’re kind. Even when they tease or poke fun, there’s always humor in it, always light. They praise Gert and Molly’s accomplishments loudly and constantly to anyone who will listen. And they like him. Spending time at Gert’s when he was little was always the best. Whereas the other parents were strict, don’t go here, don’t touch that, stay out of that room, the Yorkes basically just let them be free, to explore and do what they wanted. But they were always close by. And you could hug them.

And you could cry if you needed to. They wouldn’t say anything. They wouldn’t get angry. They would just console you, comfort you until it had passed. “Little bodies, big emotions,” he remembers Stacey saying, smiling gently, helping him wash his face after something had been too much.

They were never mad. Chase doesn’t think he has ever seen them mad. Scared maybe. The day that they all took to climbing the tree in the backyard and Gert went too high and had an anxiety attack, they were scared, but he has never seen them cruel. Gert has never mentioned them cruel.

He likes the Yorkes. All of them. But especially Gert. That’s kind of unfair, though, because Chase is pretty sure he likes Gert more than anyone who has ever existed or will ever exist. There’s everyone else, and then there’s Gert. There is Gert. Unlike anyone else. Her own complete sentence. And Chase stares at the phone almost lost because he knows what he wants to type, but he just doesn’t know if he can, whether she’ll be receptive to it.

Fuck it, he thinks and does it anyway because the night is just the right amount of cool and there are stars in the sky and it is Friday and he is alone, has been alone, drifting for the better part of two years until they started their game. He misses her. He types, “Well. I’m not sleeping either if you want to come over and talk.”

“Chase. It’s 1:24 in the morning.”

His throat feels like it is closing.

“...are you okay?”

This is where he is supposed to lie. This is where he is supposed to tell her that he’s fine, everything’s fine, he’s just being tired and dumb. This is where he’s supposed to brush it off, ha ha, a joke, funny right, go to sleep Gert, talk to you tomorrow Gert, but his arm hurts where his father gripped it tight tight like he was nothing important, and he’s out of pictures to like, and the stars are bright. And he remembers being young and sitting next to her on a blanket in the backyard, pointing at clouds and telling each other what they saw there, how they promised to always tell each other the truth. He remembers. He has not been living up to that. Maybe he can start doing so again now. “no,” he types.

“omw”

Chase always knows when Gert is in a hurry because she resorts to slang in their conversations, stops punctuating. Part of him is glad, and part of him is scared because once he starts telling the truth, it can be hard for Chase to stop. Once he gets going in anything, it can be hard for Chase to stop. This is why he tries not to do much, not to say much. Everything or nothing, he can never seem to exist in a happy medium.

Part of him is screaming. Part of him is telling him to take it back, to tell her that he was wrong, that he’s just tired, that the night around him is just too big, the house is too big, life is too big. He’s having one of those moments that they always show in movies and teen dramas wherein something is happening. That she should stay home, and it will pass. But he takes too long. Because he doesn’t want her to stay home.

He takes too long, and then she is texting him that she’s there, although she has parked a little ways away and walked up because that is just how people arrive at Chase’s house. You don’t park in the drive. You don’t run to the door. You are quiet and stealthy always. No one has ever explained this fact to anyone, but it’s just what happens like they know, like they can feel the danger in the air that emanates from Victor Stein.

“Where are you?”

“Telescope. You remember?”

“Of course. Be right there.”

Of course, she does. Chase is pretty sure that Gert knows everything, knows things that haven’t even happened yet, and that is part of the reason why life can overwhelm her sometimes. It must be hard, he thinks, having a mind that contains so much and puts past mistakes on repeat like a bad club DJ. It must be difficult when that drowns out everything else that you are, that you know, the fact that you’re the best thing in the whole entire world. He wonders if she knows that part, how she is the best thing in the world or if that is one of the things that only he has figured out, perhaps wished into being like the stories that used to swim through his head, persistent and demanding until he told her.

Maybe he should tell her this, too.

His thoughts are broken by the sound of Gert's approach and while he knows that no one is going to hear them, he tenses on reflex anyway. “Hey,” she says as she walks up, dressed in a Bad Religion t-shirt, dinosaur print leggings, and the battered olive green docs that he knows, from personal experience, are good at toe stomping. Nothing matches. She's gorgeous. He should tell her that.

Instead, he just smiles, wonders how many words it holds and whether Gert can read them, and pats the spot next to him, an invitation he desperately hopes she'll take. “Hey.”

Gert hesitates, one hand on the telescope, the other twisting her hair around her finger, a nervous habit that has yet to fade from her. Perhaps it never will. Then she seems to make a decision because she settles down beside him, their sides pressed together. “So,” there's something awkward in her tone, forced, “what's wrong? What really has you up this late besides liking my pictures.”

Wouldn't be that enough of a reason?

Chase hums to himself and plays with a loose thread on the hem of his shirt while he debates how to answer, how much of the truth to let go of. If he says everything, will he just be hollow? “Dad's in a mood because his work trip this weekend got canceled. We got into it over dinner, and I guess I'm still keyed up.” It's the truth just without the shadow included.

“I'm sorry.” Gert, out of all of them, knows how much Chase longs for his father's approval, how he never seems to reach it.

He has never been able to tell her the complete truth of the matter, though, how deep the schism goes, how obvious his father’s disappointment can be when painted on skin.

“I guess,” she continues, and she is looking at her hands; he is looking at her. “I'm not sure why you decided to talk to me instead of one of the elite.” That has been her word for the people Chase associates with now since before he was assimilated by them, and it doesn't normally make him feel small but tonight he shivers with the implications behind it.

“I knew you were up,” he offers, paltry, small, a hiding even if it isn’t a lie.

She huffs out a noise that would be a laugh on anyone else. On Gert, though, it is humorless, just a sound. “It’s Friday night. There’s got to be a party somewhere.”

A party that Chase would have been invited to without question but one that no one would have even mentioned to Gert or uttered around her in passing. Chase has heard the stories; Gert once attended one of the popular parties and ended up kicking two people in the shins when she found them offering strange pills to underclassmen. She also apparently managed to sabotage the keg so that it would only dispense eight ounces every thirty minutes--to help ensure that no one attempted a keg stand--and then called in a noise complaint to the cops when she left, ensuring that the party was shut down. His friends use this as an example of her supreme “bitchdom”, but Chase finds it endearing though maybe a little too much. Gert can be like that, taking things to extremes.

“There probably is,” he agrees, “which just means they’d all be drunk and not looking at their phones.”

“But you could be there.”

Parties are loud and full of unpredictable people. Chase doesn’t really enjoy them. He attends about two of them a semester, usually when they’re thrown in conjunction with a win for the lacrosse team, in order to maintain the facade. The rest of the time he pretty much bows out of them. It’s easy to do. He just says that his father won’t let him. His friends don’t know the details, but they know that Victor Stein is a hardass, they know that Chase works to please him. It’s an easy excuse. It’s so much easier than saying he wants nothing to do with their parties and their lives that seems as hard as shiny as plastic or the carapaces of beetles.

“Not much in a party mood,” he says, though, to the point and simple, something that a lot of people think reflects him as well.

“Ah,” she says and hums, side still pressed against his own, and it is taking everything in him not to just lean against her a little bit more. But he doesn’t because that is not what they are anymore. They are not best friends anymore. She is not his safety net, and he is not her place of comfort. They are just two people who once knew each other more than anyone else but are now divided by the rift of a friend’s death and social circles that do not even orbit each other.

Except that he keeps seeing her in everything he does and everywhere he goes. And liking her pictures at odd hours of the day. Messaging her constantly. Thinking about her. Dreaming about her. Missing being like this only better. This is passingly okay, but it is not what he wants. Chase isn’t even sure he knows what he wants, not really, not completely.

“What kind of mood are you in, Chase?”

When he glances over, Gert is looking at him but not in her normal, appraising way where it feels like she is slowly peeling off all of your skin with her eyes in order to get to what lies beneath, shallow continuous cuts that never stop until she has learned everything there is to learn, until she’s done with you. This is not that. This is not the gaze that Gert gives people from across the classroom before she points out how their argument is wrong or diminutive or doesn’t keep up with the times or doesn’t take something into account. This is not Gert looking for flaws; this is just Gert looking much like she would do when they were younger and still friends. Suddenly Chase realizes that what he wants most of all is to just get back to that place where they could sit in silence, comfortable, or talk endlessly about their worlds and their hopes and their dreams without any fear of judgement from the other, without the knowledge that in the light of day, in front of other people, they wouldn’t be friends anymore.

“Nostalgic.”

Gert tilts her head just enough that her hair falls forward, almost forming a curtain of purple across her face, and he reaches out to brush it back before he can stop himself because he really, really wants to see her eyes. For her part, Gert is silent and doesn’t mention the gesture. “Big word from you. Especially lately.”

Her gaze might have softened, but her words continue to be swords pointed straight at the heart of him. “Did you come all the way out here to lambaste me? You could have done that through messenger. It would have been easier.”

The way her gaze shifts away and how her mouth twists a little lets him know that he has struck a chord. “Sorry. I.” Gert runs a hand through her hair. “I’m just defensive.” She pulls her legs up, knees pressed against her chest and arms wrapped around them. “This is all kind of weird and unexpected. It’s like something changed, and I don’t understand what or how so I don’t know that I can trust it.” She pauses as though taking a moment to find the right words.

Chase stays quiet. He’s seen Gert like this many times over the years, weighing what she’s going to say, flipping through all the possible combinations before she concocts the perfect sentence. It’s a thing she does when she’s nervous. It’s a thing she does with people she cares about, too, and that strikes him. She still cares about him in some way, somehow, even after everything that has happened.

When she starts talking again, her eyes are on her hands, which twist together in anxious motions. “I keep thinking that this is going to be a joke, a setup. That you will have completely fallen into the clutches of those shallow people whose company you’ve been keeping, and this is all a prank for you to show them how little the rest of us mean to you. I don’t want it to be that, Chase. That is the last thing that I want it to be, but it keeps popping into my head, unwanted, constantly. So, yeah, I’m being a defensive bitch to you right now. I’m sorry. I just keep thinking that any moment Eiffel is going to leap out from behind a bush and throw pig’s blood on me or something.”

It feels like his heart has been locked in a box that is getting increasingly smaller by the moment. “I mean, for one thing, Eiffel would never be caught dead near pig’s blood so you’re safe there.”

It’s enough to get her to turn a glare his way, and he uses the moment to give her a smile that only makes her roll her eyes.

“Hey, sorry, that’s my knee-jerk defense mechanism, huh?”

“I remember.”

Of course, she does. Gert Yorkes seems to remember every moment of every day. For better or worse. “It’s not, you know. A trick. It’s not a setup. I have no plan to sell you out to them. I don’t really like them all that much, but they’re,” he trails off, shrugs.

“Safe?” she offers.

He nods because it’s true. “Yeah, they’re safe. It’s safe with them. All anyone cares about is the pretense. I can just be some lacrosse player. I can focus on being this jock that people think is attractive and shallow. Things are easier. No one looks too hard. They stare constantly, but they don’t look. And I have a…” He’s not sure what the right word is for what he has, they’re not friends.

“A herd,” Gert says, and she is back to looking at him in the way that is soft, that reminds him of days spent under trees, reading aloud to each other. “You have a herd. It’s harder for prey animals to attack you because of the group.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t have a herd. To me, your herd are the prey animals.”

He sighs, pushes a hand through his hair and leans his head back against the wall. It’s easier to look at the stars now than at her because the stars won’t tell him inconvenient truths, the stars won’t pull his shortcomings out to shame him. There is nothing incorrect in Gert’s accusations, and that’s the thing that hurts the most. “I know. And I’m sorry about that. I am.”

Some small part of him wants to tell her that she could have had it, she could have had the herd, but he doesn’t say it because it’s not her. It was never her. It has never been in Gert to change who she is fundamentally in order to fit in with people. It’s one of the things that he has always admired in her, though it can also be terrifying. And, of course, he reminds himself that she did have a herd, they all did, before it fell apart.

“It’s not your fault.”

“No, but I could have done things to make it better.”

Gert is fidgeting, all nervous hand gestures and pushing up her glasses and playing with her hair. He would like to reach out and wrap his fingers around her wrists, tell her it’s okay, there is no danger here, but he’s not sure how it would be received so he just keeps his hands laced behind his head, pinned so that he doesn’t give in to the temptation to touch her.

“Adversity builds character, they say,” she says with a grin that he knows is fake, and then she shrugs. “At least that’s what the `rents say. It’s not your fault, Chase. It’s not your job to look out for me.”

He’d make it his job if she let him, he thinks, though he’s not sure how he would make that work with the rest of his life. Maybe he could let it all go. Maybe if he had Gert, he wouldn’t need the safety of the press of the people he doesn’t really even like that much. There is a lot that he should probably say. There is the better part of two years between them, and a lot has changed in that time. Not the way he feels about her, though, that has not changed. If anything it has just gotten deeper, wider, a river cutting through a mountain, changing the course of the landscape around it with slow, steady precision. He’d like to launch a boat on it, see how far it would take him, try to suss out what it all means, the strange bubbling in his chest that he gets when talking to her or when close to her like this, but he’s not sure if she would be amiable to it.

There is so much he could say, but he’s not sure he even has all the right words, isn’t even sure that he understands all of it just yet. “I miss you,” is what ends up coming out of his mouth. “I miss talking to you. I miss feeling like there’s someone around who gets me. I miss the teasing.” Chase is looking at her, and she is looking back, hands stilled, a mixture of what he thinks is shock and confusion on her face. It might end badly, but he’s not sure he cares so much right now so he reaches out and cups her cheek. “I miss having you in my life.”

“I thought you stopped caring.”

It runs him straight through despite the fact that he doubts she means to land such a blow. “No. Not for a minute. I just didn’t know how to get back to being the sort of person you’d allow in your life.”

Gert laughs, but it sounds slightly on the edge of hysterical and turns so that she is facing him now. It’s both better and worse. Better because he can see her properly, the strange play of emotions that flits across her face, more moods than he even knows how to process, and worse because her warmth is no longer pressed against his side. “Silly. You’ve always been the sort of person I want in my life. Hell,” she claps her hands together like it’s a proclamation, “you’re one of the few people I routinely want in my life. I was elated when you messaged me. I was over the moon when it continued, but I kept thinking it was just going to go away again.”

“Is that why you were mean?”

“I’m always mean.”

He swipes his thumb over her cheek, and she closes her eyes like it is the best thing in the world; he’s not really sure what to do with that other than enjoy it in the rushing waters of his heart. “You’re not. You know what I’m talking about.”

Her eyes are on him again. “I do. And yeah. I thought if I was mean you’d stop and then I’d be in control of when you left. But you just kept messaging me and liking pictures and. Being there.” Gert shrugs, and he wonders when she’s going to pull away because it’s inevitable. She will not linger there with his hand on her face forever, something will break the spell eventually, even if he hopes for never.

It’s late. The world around them is quiet, even his house, so often tempestuous and loud when his father is home, is quiet. The stars are out. It feels like they are the only two people in the entire universe in moments like these, and Chase would happily hit the pause button on his life and just stay here, sitting next to Gert, talking about things that he normally doesn’t even dare think about because opening up seems like a rabbit hole, seems like trying to unleash a little bit of the ocean and getting swept away completely in the tide.

“I like being there. I like having you here. I’d be fine with being closer.”

She still has not moved. If anything, she seems to have shifted nearer, and Chase thinks he can see the very faint scar on her cheek from when they went exploring in the woods and she fell, cut her face on a rock. Chase had cried at the sight of the blood, terrified, but Gert had been strong for both of them. “Closer? Like when we were kids?”

Chase is pretty sure she means when they were best friends, and it seemed like nothing could part them not even when he pressed a kiss to her cheek in a moment of wild ambition and she, shocked, pushed him into a rose bush without meaning to. Sometimes when he looks at her, he thinks he can still feel the pinpricks of thousands of thorns digging into his skin, but they’re not unwelcome. They are suspended in a moment that seems like it is outside of time, outside of worries, and the twinge in his arm from where his father grabbed it too hard has faded, replaced by the feel of her cheek against his fingers. There is no better time to say anything than now, but he still stumbles over his words. “Maybe. Maybe not exactly like when we were kids. Maybe.” He swallows and does not look away from Gert’s eyes, which are keen, inspecting. “Maybe closer.”

It’s not hard to see anxiety skate over Gert’s features if you know what to look for, the slightly faster breathing, eyes shifting, and chewing on her bottom lip. What he wants to do is run his thumb over her lip, tell her that it’s fine, it’s fine if she says no, it’s fine if she says yes. It’s fine if she doesn’t know yet. But he doesn’t say any of that because rushing Gert can be worse than whatever her mind cooks up. A lot of the time, it’s best to just wait it out. Chase is good at waiting. It might be the one thing that he’s best at, not making any moves, waiting to see what life brings him, hoping it’s not terrible.

“Closer,” she finally says, and now she is definitely leaning towards him. “You know, there was a really stupid part of me that thought, when you started liking my pictures at two in the morning a few months back, that maybe you were just lonely and wanted to make out. Random middle of the night thirst or something equally as boring as that.” She says it in such a nonchalant way, but her fingers drumming on his knee are frantic and speak much louder than the words.

“That would be a bad thing?” Chase Stein doesn’t know what it will feel like when the world ends, but it might be close to the oddly hollow sensation that seems to have opened in his chest even though he knows this is what Gert does, defends herself with words that she might not necessarily mean. The problem is knowing when she does because Gert says everything with the same amount of conviction.

“No,” she breathes out. “I just assumed you were so drunk you couldn’t see straight. But now I’m thinking I was wrong. About the you being drunk thing. Not the you wanting to make out thing. Unless I am. Wrong. Maybe about both. I don’t know.”

“I don’t have to be drunk to see you.” It’s true. It’s so true it feels like it hurts him as it comes out of his throat, sticks and catches, thorns. Like that rosebush. “I always see you.” This would be a great time to spontaneously combust, a topic he knows more about than he’s entirely comfortable with because it was one of Gert’s obsessions when she was twelve. Gert was enraptured, Chase spent three months silently terrified of burning to death at any moment with no warning.

“Oh.”

“I’m just dumb. I’ve just been dumb.”

Gert covers his hand with her own, laces their fingers together and then sets their conjoined hands on her knee, her thumb tracing back and forth across his skin like she is attempting to completely memorize the texture of it. “You’re not, you know. No matter how hard you pretend to be. You’re just.” She shrugs and shakes her head like she isn’t sure where to go with it or like she doesn’t trust her own words on this topic, which is probably the more Gert option of the two.

“Hiding?” he supplies, and she nods.

Chase has been in hiding for the majority of his life in one way or another. Hiding from his father, distancing himself from his friends after the shock of Amy’s death, making himself into something else in order to fit in with the popular herd. All he does is blend in, all Gert does is stand out, so very much herself that he has always felt dwarfed despite the fact that she is physically small. “Yeah,” he continues after a moment, “I thought it was safe.”

“What are you hiding from?” she asks, point blank, no pretense, blunt because Gert is a person who wants answers when she wants them and cannot always remember to round the tips of her corners so that they do not jab.

The list is long, and Chase isn’t sure that he can get into it all at the moment, isn’t sure he wants to, but Gert is looking at him with her big eyes, always so clever, always so shrewd, and her fingers are threaded through his own, warm, though not nearly as soft as he remembers, callused slightly from playing musical instruments probably because Gert has always been the one of their gang inclined for that. “I don’t know,” he says. “Probably myself more than anything.” What he wants, who he is, what he fears will come to pass, which is mostly himself as his father, strict, disappointed, quick to anger, prone to fury when things do not go exactly his way, and unyielding in every way possible. Maybe this is why he is always so complacent in things, an effort to not become rigid in anything, even the way he feels.

Gert is silent like she always is when she's plotting something, and Chase should know because he has followed her on countless ill-conceived missions in the past. Not that he would trade any of those memories for something more mundane. “You never really said what was wrong. Why you wanted my company tonight.”

“I always want your company.” The admission is a rush that leaves them both blushing, Gert’s hold on his hand slightly harder than needed but he doesn't mind, hopes the sensation goes deep, down to his bones, so he doesn't forget it in case it never happens again, in case this is all just a moment out of time and space never to be repeated.

“I told you. My dad and I got into it.”

“That's nothing new.”

And it's true. While Gert might not know all the details that go along with that, Chase is aware that she knows he and Victor don't really get along. No matter how hard Chase tries. Sometimes. Not always. He can't always be the one trying; it's exhausting.

“Was it different this time?” she continues when he doesn't answer.

He thinks of the bruises already starting to show on his arm, the yelling, the tense feeling in the air that he can find even now if he focuses past this moment, beyond the touch of her fingers and the shine off her eyes. “No, not really.” Victor Stein is predictable. His anger has a certain feel, a definable taste, copper in the air. Chase doesn't think he could ever really be surprised by him at this point. Honestly, it's not even that disappointing anymore. It's just a routine, and he hates that.

“Then what was it, Chase?”

“Like I said, I've missed you. I wanted to see you. I didn't want to be alone. When I want company, Gert, I want your company. It's been like that for a long time.” So long that Chase doesn't even know when it started to bleed over from something simple into the mess of tangled yarn that it is now, this swirling pool in his stomach, the skip in his heart.

“You could have said that.”

“Would you have been any less worried?”

She sighs but not from frustration as much as acquiescence. “No.”

“I was worried you wouldn't come if I said that. Or that you'd stop talking to me altogether. That's,” he takes a shaky breath. “That's been the biggest fear lately. That I'll lose you again after just getting you back. Kinda. And worried about wanting more.”

“Closer?”

“Closer,” he agrees too quickly, his voice insistent, and Gert smiles. He has been shifting nearer this entire time, and her face is so close that he uses his free hand to gently brush over the scar on her cheek from that fall.

“You know, part of me liking your pictures back at two in the morning was because I wanted to make out with you as well.” There's something hesitant and shy in Gert's voice, the pitch of her anxiety tone when she doubts herself.

“At least I wasn't alone in the feeling.” Even if he could never have put it into those exact words himself, too busy hiding from everything.

“Is this close enough?” Her lips brush his when she speaks, and her voice is breathy in a way that sends a sharp shiver down his spine.

It is enough and not all at the same time. “Maybe just a bit closer.”

Chase lets her close the gap between them, and her lips are slightly chapped but the kiss is so soft, so perfect that he sighs into it. His hand on her face slides into her hair even as she kisses a little harder, her free fingers still drumming on his leg. When he opens his mouth a little, a silent invitation that he hopes isn't too much too fast, she eagerly accepts.

The stars are shining and her teeth on his lip are gentle but steady pressure, no pain, no thorns. He moans slightly because it's that good, and she settles into his lap, all kisses and softly murmured words that he can't really hear but that's okay because he understands their meaning anyway. Even without words, they can make do.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [Tumblr](http://sarkastically.tumblr.com/) if you want.


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